SFR, Inc.

[Babatoongie]

Hello,

I was just thinking has anyone ever examined the impact of a re-roll once per march/roll on the balance of the game? Many games these days that have dice pools or dice rolling now implement some kind of yahtzee like keep and reroll X dice up to Y times mechanic. Has that ever been attempted with Dragon dice?

It seems like something that might help balance out wild swingy blow out/wiff turns and allow for more confidence in a given strategy. I love the game and my wife and I enjoy playing from time to time, but the least enjoyable games are the ones where I throw a massive melee attack and she rolls virtually no saves and I halve her forces in a single turn. Coming back from a turn like that is incredibly difficult while also preventing me from out maneuvering. While of course an extra roll or two won't solve that problem, but it certainly would increase the average number of "successes" be it melee, range, save, etc. or allow you to try and reach for SAIs or things that might give you a strategic advantage at the expense of taking extra damage or dealing less damage. It would push the outputs on both sides more toward the center/upper-center of the curve and reduce the variance which might make the incremental gains/losses smaller and the game will take longer but the number of decisions would increase which will in my opinion improve the overall "feel" of the game with regard to how much a given player feels responsible for the outcome of the match.

All in all I know many don't want to "fix" what they believe to not be broken, but the consistency that something like this might offer could help newer players feel more in control of the outcomes when they are playing or learning and don't have a grip on the admittedly opaque strategy that DD can have at times. I can tell you the times I've tried to teach people almost all of them have said something about feeling like randomness or the RNG gods have more influence than their choices. While this isn't necessarily true in all cases, the allowance of a re-roll for each time you are asked to make a standard roll (melee, range, save, magic) and not for niche situations (ID/Saves for spells, or things that were designed for a one and done situation) might make the game more welcoming and give older players a new strategic twist.

I may try this as a variant, and I'm not asking for the official rules to be changed as that isn't my place, but I'd love to hear if anyone has tried this or if they would like to try it and report back with the outcomes, good, bad, or otherwise. Thanks!

[DScottOBrien]

First off, welcome. Glad to see new players here.

The subject of re-rolls always comes up every now and again, in some form or another.

Let me ask this...when playing, and a roll comes up with little or no results you need, you request a re-roll. you then deal significant damage to your opponent via SAI's such as Smite or Volley, etc. which have no chance to save. Should they be given the opportunity to force you to re-roll again, using the same argument i.e. the randomness of the dice hurts gameplay?

Where one bad rolls hurts you due to RNG, a good roll hurts your opponent equally.

The probabilities of rolling results within the standard deviation far outweigh the frequency of results on either end of the curve.

The simple fact is, sometimes bad rolls happen, its just the nature of the game
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D Scott O'Brien
Dice Junkie
Anal-retentive rules scrutinizer

[cliffwiggs]

nice response. I hadn't considered the other side of the curve.
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